Bitlocker is computer drive encryption. On W11 it’s supposed to be tied to the motherboards TPM. End to end encryption is not really applicable in this scenario. That phrase is more applicable to cloud services or storage where a telecom or CSP hosts or transports your data but can’t see what the data is.

Microsoft should not have the keys to decrypt Bitlocker ever.

I feel you on the UI changes, I’ve definitely noticed the extra clicks, and there is also a bit of a weird pattern when navigating between the main content area and the top bar where the selector wants to go to the left navigation pane.

I still feel fortunate every time I open up Plex that it exists, and I’m sure that their devs hear enough criticism on the internet that I try to leave something positive for them to find. So until the day that Plex operates anything close to the miserable experience that is a Roku in 2026, I’ll keep using it. I maintain perfect metadata and file naming for just that day.

I feel like there are a lot of people who hate on Plex here, but for me it’s really been super solid so I always try to advocate for it. JF wasn’t for me. Buy once/use forever, great capable interface, great apps (downloads work perfectly now), and I never need to fiddle with it. I replace a Synology package every few weeks when they release a new version and it just keeps ticking.

I paid $89 for it on sale, and I’d definitely groan if I had to pay $250 for it today, but I’d still pay it. I’m just glad they’re paying hardworking folks to make the software I’ve used EVERY DAY for years. It’s the buy-once-cry-once model we wished every other software vendor would go back to.

Not everything you don’t like is a bot. I learned something new today that DP supports audio and feel a bit foolish for not knowing that before now, though I stand by my personal experience with the connector. Between work and home, it’s always the DP that flicker at the slightest tap.

Two considerations: Displayport doesn’t support audio, and there is no connector on the planet more frustrating and unreliable than DisplayPort. It’s like a joke how sensitive it is to the lightest bump. HDMI just works.

I back this viewpoint also. I’m not sure how Rebble could justify indefinitely charging for access to apps that they scraped from Pebble. Eric’s response satisfied me that Core is not morally wrong. Some people are so willing to have a knee jerk reaction.

I was working on my Mom’s Samsung tonight and can confirm that default One UI is the worst cell phone interface experience I’ve ever had. Needing a skin or launcher is a deal breaker when devices with great OOTB experience exist.

I am nearing the end of my rope with Android, I might suggest hanging on with your iPhone for another cycle. My P9 Pro is feeling more and more like just an advertisement data collection machine, and core features like speech to text and notifications have never been worse.

I don’t own an iPhone, but got an iPad in 2024, and most of what I do on my iPad feels more refined. I was floored this morning when speaking out a comment on the iPad that the text to speech didn’t add a bunch of random periods/caps alongside half a dozen incorrect words. iOS also has basic things like consistent first party podcast, payment, and chat apps that they don’t continually switch out every few years like what Google just did (looking at you Google Podcasts, GPay in USA, and Hangouts). We’re also losing the ability to install apps from outside the walled garden that is then play store at some point soon. I’m not looking forward to learning what that means for my Retroid/Android gaming handhelds.

If you do jump to Android, consider the Pixel 9 Pro. I hate it the least of anything I’ve tried in then Android universe. Battery life is very respectable, I can actually get 2 full days from a charge. The cameras have somehow fallen in their standard shooting mode, but the pro/high res mode is crispy AF, just a bummer that the file sizes are bigger than they are on my Sony mirrorless. Samsung makes nice hardware but the skin they put on Android is truly terrible. If you use Microsoft work apps on your phone, you’ll appreciate being able to shut them off with one button, and your employer’s limited visibility into your phone will be further reduced to what’s installed in the work container.

Microtik is the router brand that I want to love, I even looked into deploying them when I worked at a service provider. Those little things had more features than anything else, but unfortunately they had such a poor track record with vulnerabilities that they really can’t be considered.

We’re a year or so into our AWS migration, but will have a presence on prem for years to come. Broadcom has seen our last dollar, so for what remains on prem, we will be moving to a different hypervisor. I was kinda hoping that Proxmox could be the one, but it may not shake out that way.

I don’t even want to hear an argument for moving back on prem with how badly Broadcom/VMware ripped our eyes out this year. 350% increase over 2 years ago, and I still have to buy the hardware, secure it in a room, power it, buy redundant Internet and networking equipment, get a backup facility, buy and test a generator/UPS, and condition the damn air. Oh then every few years we have to switch out all the hardware when it stops getting vendor support.

At least everyone was all in the same boat today, and we all know what was broken.

It would just escalate things. A few armed confrontations one week and the next week it would be tanks and Apache helicopters. Cops love to escalate.

Firefox is doing amazing right now. My uBlock origin on desktop and mobile Android is still working months after it stopped working in Chrome.

Agreed across all points. Android’s main advantages after the changes go through with side loading will be:

1. choice of manufacturer and
2. the still-deeply-flawed-but-far-superior implementation of a work profile in Android.

I love being able to press one button and have all of my containerized work apps shut off. It is also quite nice that a remote wipe from M365 could be limited to the work app container rather than the entire phone.

It is a tough choice, both companies are gigantic and kind of scumbags. Funny story though, I was also in the market for a new computer recently as my 10 year old Windows 10 tower was really starting to show its age. My frustrations with Windows had also peaked.

I have been doing a more photo and video editing for fun, and I ended up taking a leap. I got an M4 Pro Mac mini. Mac OS is definitively better (IMO) for home use than Windows, and the M series processors are like wizardry. I liked it so much that shortly after I bought a used M2 Max MacBook Pro off of a coworker.

Coincidentally, a few months after I got my Macs LTT also switched over first to Snapdragon-based Windows laptops and later to Macs for a 30-day challenge and they ended up staying on the Macs.

I am an IT manager and I don’t think I would ever want to deploy Macs at scale in my workplace, though it is the only computer I look forward to using now.

One personal phone. They give me a stipend. I did the two-phone game years ago and I’ll never do it again. It’s fine.

I’m sure we all have a different perception, but my current view is that Google sells you a phone that they need to push ads and harvest vast amounts of data from you in order to make money on the phone, and Apple somehow needs to do this less.

Which company do you feel takes privacy more seriously? From what I understand, Google primarily makes their money from advertising.

I can’t do Graphene because of work. I am an IT manager, and one of our guys did graphene and had a host of issues with the work apps. I really can’t risk any issues.

Sorry I should have clarified. Google pay moved the payment features to Google wallet, but the biggest loss was the person-to-person payments are now gone. I never understood why they had multiple apps that did the same thing. I seem to also remember a time where there was a Google pay and gpay app that lived side by side, so there were a total of three apps when there should have been one.

Yes, sorry I should have clarified. The biggest loss was the person-to-person payments are now gone. I never understood why they had multiple apps that did the same thing. I seem to also remember a time where there was a Google pay and gpay app that lived side by side, so there were a total of three apps when there should have been one.